Cycling Speaker Series, Mar. 29 (Saskatoon)
Cathy Watts, co-chair of Saskatoon Cycles, is the first speaker in a Cycling Speaker Series hosted by Bridge City Bicycle Co-op and the Bike Doctor at 7 pm, Mar. 29.

Design the Nightscape – Shaping Darkness, Apr. 4 (Saskatoon)
Sabine de Schutter, Berlin, will discuss the potential and risks of light, highlighting projects taking the well-being of humans and animals into account as well as safety at 6:30 pm, Apr. 4

EcoSask News is a weekly round-up of local news and events. Email us if you have items you would like us to include. You can follow EcoFriendly Sask by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter, or by email (top right corner).

Sunday, 25 March 2018

At a Repair Café, people who know how to fix things help people who have something that is broken (furniture, electrical appliances, electronics, clothes). They work together, sharing knowledge, so that hopefully the owners will feel more comfortable doing their own repairs in future.

“I’ve always been interested in environmental sustainability,” says Lillis Lawrence of Prince Albert. “When I spotted a bicycle repair shop in Montreal and then heard mention of repair cafés at a waste reduction conference hosted by the City of Prince Albert, it sparked my imagination. Could this be another way of getting people interested in sustainability, maintaining things rather than throwing them out?”

Lillis decided to probe a little deeper and met with Nisar Ghani, the City’s Sanitation Manager. Nisar had seen a repair café in Toronto and thought it could work in Prince Albert. Habitat for Humanity also stepped on board to provide some equipment and supplies.

Most successful repair cafés are located in a municipal facility so the group approached Prince Albert’s Executive Council and City Council to ask for their support for the concept of a repair café and to recommend a site that they could use.

At the January 22, 2018, Council meeting, the City agreed to provide free use of space at the Margo Fournier Centre once a month and asked the group to report back on the Repair Café’s progress in about 8 months. Lillis was pleased that the recreational facility was in a central downtown location.

The First Repair Cafe Repair Café Prince Albert registered with Repair Café International and received a digital package containing posters, logo, registration and feedback forms, and suggestions on how to get started. This streamlined the set-up process for their first Repair Café on March 3.

Lillis also set about looking for volunteer fixers. She signed up her husband Steve first of all as he is a prime fixer – “It’s something I’ve always done, and over the year[s], I’ve probably saved thousands of dollars just from not replacing stuff,” he says. Steve, who works at Saskatchewan Polytechnic, handed out notices looking for possible fixers and so did Habitat for Humanity. A couple of other people stepped forward thanks to local media coverage.

There were four repair tables at the first Repair Café for sewing and mending, furniture repair, electrical, and electronics. As people dropped in, they signed up at reception and were directed to the appropriate table. In the end, the Café handled 24 items although not all of them could be fixed on the spot. Some, such as a turntable, will be coming back in April once the owners have ordered the necessary parts.

Most of the fixers provided their own tools, but Habitat for Humanity provided some through their ReStore. Other essential items proved to be extension cords and task lighting.

Future Plans
Prince Albert’s next Repair Café is on April 7 and there will be a fixer on hand to help with bicycle repairs, but the real focus on bicycle repairs will be at the May 5 Café when they hope to be able to work outdoors with 4 fixers and a short session on bicycle maintenance.

The City is considering donating a few bicycles from the police compound and Lillis has suggested the Repair Café as a possible outing for Big Brothers Big Sisters as well as an opportunity for some of the youth to help repair and then own one of the donated bicycles.

Electronics proved very popular at the first Café so Lillis and her team are looking for more fixers in this area. Lillis is also looking for volunteers to help with planning and organization to ensure the activity isn’t dropped if some volunteers take holidays or are unavailable. “Several people have expressed their support but said that they weren’t fixers,” Lillis says. “Hopefully they can become involved in coordination, promotion and communications, and providing snacks.”

Thursday, 22 March 2018

Students in a University of Saskatchewan class asked themselves how they could green their university campus. Their solution? Turn a 10-acre plot on the University’s Endowment Lands into a solar farm generating enough green power for 200 homes.

Share knowledge about establishing a solar farm with First Nations communities considering community energy projects

Provide a setting to teach school classes about renewable energy

Offset the University’s carbon footprint

Decrease Saskatchewan’s dependency on fossil fuels

Enhance the University's sustainability rating in the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s STARS program

Produce revenue – bonus!

The proposal doesn’t rely on government grants or university funding. Instead, the students are proposing a $20/student/year add-on to tuition fees. Their goal would be to start collecting funds, procure a site in 2019 and break ground in 2021, adding 100 KW of power every year until the farm reaches 1 MW, with an eventual goal of 2 MW.

Bullfrog Power has suggested the group submit a grant proposal for seed funding to kickstart the project.

The students plan to turn their project over to another university body as they’ve completed their course and will be moving on to other assignments.

Kudos to Farm the Sun with US for putting together such a well-thought-out proposal and for doing an excellent job presenting it. We hope that your dream soon becomes reality.

EcoSask News is a weekly round-up of local news and events. Email us if you have items you would like us to include. You can follow EcoFriendly Sask by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter, or by email (top right corner).

Sunday, 18 March 2018

Have you ever looked out over your garden at dusk and seen a fast-moving shadow? If you’re lucky, that’s a bat eating mosquitoes and other pesky insects. There are 8 different kinds of bats in Saskatchewan and they all eat insects – up to 1,000 an hour!

Bats are the only mammal that can fly (humans try, but we have to rely on airplanes and paraglider wings!) and they fly really, really well. Imagine shouting out loud as you walk around your house in the dark. You’ll hear an echo as you approach a wall – but will you figure it out in time to avoid bumping into the wall? Now imagine you’re tracking a tiny flying insect – bats are such experts that they can tell exactly what is in front of them, decide whether it’s good to eat, and plan a route to intercept the bug in just fractions of a second.

Bats can fly faster and with a wider range of movement than birds. Their wings are a thin, flexible membrane stretched between elongated “fingers” that can bend in all directions. Bird wings are thicker and have a more rigid bone structure.

A baby bat weighs up to 25% of its mother’s body weight when it’s born. That’s like a human mother giving birth to a 14 kg baby. Many bats set up cooperative nurseries where 20-300 mothers raise their young together – with no help from the males. In some maternity colonies, the mothers will nurse other mothers’ babies. The babies are born blind and without fur but grow quickly and can fly within 4-6 weeks.

Bats hang upside down by their toes to sleep, making it easy for them to take flight rapidly.

Red Bats hibernate over winter in trees or under leaf litter, using their thickly-furred tail as a blanket to keep them warm. Little Brown Bats hibernate in caves or abandoned mines. Hoary Bats raise their young in Canada and the northern United States but spend the winter in the southern United States or Mexico.

Big Brown Bats, often seen in cities as they like to roost in buildings, fly very fast and can reach speeds of up to 40 miles per hour. They have such strong jaws that they can eat hard-shelled beetles.

Bats are cute. They have pixie ears and soft fur. Red Bats are showy with fur ranging from bright orange to rusty brown. Hoary Bats have dark brown fur with white tips – a useful camouflage as they roost in trees and blend in well with the lichen and dead leaves.

Batrick takes a nap outdoors

What to Do if There’s a Bat in Your Home
Even if you like bats, you may not want to share your house with them. They don’t chew things like rodents, but they do make a lot of noise and they’re not toilet trained (although the bat poop makes great garden fertilizer and doesn’t carry diseases).

Bats start to come out of hibernation when there are big changes in temperature – really cold at night but above zero in the afternoon. However, it’s still way too cold for them to survive outdoors full-time and there are no insects for them to eat. If you spot a bat in your garage or attic in early spring, don’t shoo them outside as they’ll just die. The same thing applies if you come across bats holed up ready for the winter when you’re renovating in the fall.

Here’s what you should do. First of all, don’t panic. Bats are shy, gentle creatures. However, they may bite if frightened so don’t touch them with your bare hands. (Bats, like every other mammal, can catch rabies, but you’re far more likely to get rabies from a dog bite than a bat.)

Melanie Elliott in Saskatoon currently has 100 bats hibernating in Rubbermaid file boxes in her basement. She segregates the males from the females as the females tend to sleep very soundly over the winter whereas the males are more active. The bats like an enclosed space and will tuck themselves up near the drape covering the box.

Megan Lawrence of Salthaven West Rehabilitation Centre in Regina is over-wintering 20 bats this year. She doesn’t have a cold space where they can hibernate, so they’re awake and active in soft-sided enclosures that are big enough for them to stretch their wings and fly a little. They have access to food (mealworms) and water as well as safe spaces like knitted “caves” and roosting pouches.

Once the weather has warmed up sufficiently and there are lots of insects for them to eat, Melanie and Megan will release the bats where they were found.

Bat Cave at Salthaven West

Would You Like to Meet a Bat?
Batrick and Elizabat are two Big Brown Bats that Melanie Elliott was unable to release due to injuries. She obtained a permit from Saskatchewan Environment to keep them for educational purposes. They live in her home and accompany her when she meets with school or community groups to talk about bats.

If you would like to invite Melanie, Batrick, and Elizabat to visit your classroom or community group, call Melanie at 306-227-2506. Funds raised will be donated to Living Sky Wildlife Rehabilitation in Saskatoon.

Tuesday, 13 March 2018

Upcoming EventsMiEnergy Solar Information Night, Mar. 13 (Saskatoon)
Learn more about solar energy and how it could work for you at MiEnergy’s Solar Information Night from 7-9 pm, Mar. 13.

Climate Change Policy in Canadian Cities, Mar. 15 (Saskatoon/Regina)
Elizabeth Schwartz will discuss what Canadian cities are doing to combat climate change and how to make their actions more effective at a video conference from 3-4 pm, Mar. 15, in Saskatoon and Regina.

Prairies Got the Goods! Ecological Goods and Services, Mar. 18-24 (SK)
Sign up for webinars sponsored by PCAP-SK to learn more about the ecological goods and services provided by native prairie (carbon storage, habitat for species at risk, etc.) from Mar. 18-24.

EcoSask News is a weekly round-up of local news and events. Email us if you have items you would like us to include. You can follow EcoFriendly Sask by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter, or by email (top right corner).

Thursday, 8 March 2018

Films are powerful. Combining images and sound to convey a message, they can inform and inspire. We’ve put together a list of films, many of which have won awards at environmental film festivals. We guarantee you’ll find at least one, if not several, that you will enjoy.

Available for Download
Most of these films can be downloaded or watched online free of charge. Some require a purchase.

Our Last Refuge: A film about the Blackfeet Nation’s fight to protect the wild and sacred Badger-Two Medicine from industrial development (25m)

River Blue: How dirty are your jeans? The impact of fashion on the world’s rivers (full-length documentary)

Running Wild: Citizen scientists undertake a massive project to determine if wolverines have returned to Utah’s Uinta mountains (7m8s)

Sustainable Me: Young Edmontonians have developed a series of films and podcasts to show how the changes we make can save the environment - from a geothermal community to trading, swapping, and repurposing

Sea of Life: Follow Canadian filmmaker Julia Barnes on an underwater adventure to discover the truth about the biggest threats facing our oceans today (1h28m)

Seasons: By the directors of Winged Migration, Seasons explores life in Europe’s lush forests, recounting the shared history that binds humans with the natural world (1h36m)

Temple of the Ghost Owl: A great gray owl is caught in the middle of a political controversy over logging burnt habitat (21m16s)

The Corridor: Exploring the conflict between our desire to hold on to natural areas and the push for development, concentrating on one location, and one road, in Australia (22m)

Unbroken Grounds: Four areas of agriculture aim to change our relationship to the land and oceans through regenerative agriculture and grazing, diversified crop development, and restorative fishing (26m)

Valve Turners: A team of activists shuts down five pipelines carrying tar sands crude oil into the United States from Alberta (9m)

Demain [Tomorrow]: What could be tomorrow’s world? Meet the pioneers who are re-inventing agriculture, energy, economy, democracy, and education in 10 countries around the world (full-length documentary)

How We Grow: Land access, income inequality, and a short growing season turn from barriers into levers as these ambitious young farmers discover ways to get healthy, sustainably produced, locally grown, nutrient dense food onto the tables of everyone in the community (1h5m)

Unfractured: An intimate look at one activist’s convictions, hopes, and sacrifices as Sandra Steingraber speaks out against fracking (full-length documentary)

Water Warriors: the story of a New Brunswick community’s successful fight to protect their water from the oil and natural gas industry (22m)

Women Bending the Curve on Climate Change: The stories of climate change leaders from Canada’s West Coast working in renewable energy, city government, energy conservation, community engagement, sustainable food, finance,and indigenous land stewardship

Yorkton Film Festival on Tour (free): DVDs of the award-winning films from Yorkton Film Festival can be screened free of charge by libraries, schools, and community groups. The Environmental DVD includes Fix and Release, Sustainable Me, and others

Tuesday, 6 March 2018

Upcoming EventsLEED Green Associate Training, Mar. 10/11 (Regina, Saskatoon)
Participate in a LEED Green Associate Training at the University of Saskatchewan on Mar. 10 and the University of Regina on Mar. 11.

The new Line 3 crude-oil pipeline will cut across southern Saskatchewan and represents a major expansion, and yet no one is talking about it. "It isn't a question of pipelines versus trains, but a choice between a short-sighted investment in a dated energy source and a commitment to more viable alternatives for the future."

EcoSask News is a weekly round-up of local news and events. Email us if you have items you would like us to include. You can follow EcoFriendly Sask by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter, or by email (top right corner).

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About

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi

EcoFriendly Sask strives to inform, encourage, and support Saskatchewan environmental initiatives. As a small, personal undertaking, we provide an online publication as well as grants to support local environmental projects. The Calendar page lists upcoming events, and we maintain the conversation on Twitter, or like our Facebook.

Individuals and organizations are encouraged to apply for grants of up to $500 to support local projects that will benefit the environment.